Page 42 - Great Elizabethans

A shy boy who loved music and stamp collecting, Farrokh Bulsara grew up to become the unforgettable performer Freddie Mercury, lead singer of Queen, whose amazing songs would live on long after his death.
FROM FARROKH TO FREDDIE
Farrokh Bulsara was born in 1946, in Zanzibar, which is a part of East Africa now called Tanzania. His parents, Bomi and Jer, were Parsis – people of Persian heritage, who follow a religion called Zoroastrianism. Farrokh was brought up in the same faith, which stayed important to him all his life. The family moved to India not long after Farrokh was born, and he and his sister, Kashmira,
grew up there, near the huge city of Bombay (now called Mumbai). Farrokh started learning to play the piano at the age of seven.
He fell in love with making music early on – one of his school friends said later that he could play any song he heard straight away! When he was a bit older, he started using the name
Freddie – and at the age of 12, he formed his very first band, which played covers of classic rock and roll songs. Calling
themselves The Hectics, they wore skinny string ties and styled their hair in big ‘puffs’. Freddie also collected
stamps, a hobby he shared with his dad.
Freddie’s voice was amazingly powerful – and the range of notes he could sing spanned four whole octaves. Most people have a range of two! Freddie believed this was because he had four extra teeth in his mouth – something which made him self–conscious about his smile all his life.
In 1963, when Freddie was 17, the family moved back to Zanzibar. But when a revolution swept the country, they had to flee, this
time to England. The Bulsaras moved to Middlesex, where Freddie studied art and graphic design. He didn’t forget his love of music, though. He soon joined up with a local band called Ibex, and then one called Sour Milk Sea, with whom he started singing some of
his own songs. He eventually had to move out of his parents’ house because the neighbours complained about the noise!
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